Milvus Has a Free API — The Scalable Vector Database

#milvus #vectordb #ai #database

Milvus is an open-source vector database built for billion-scale similarity search. It powers production AI applications at companies like Salesforce, PayPal, and Shopee.

What Is Milvus?

Milvus is purpose-built for vector similarity search with support for multiple index types, hybrid search, and multi-tenancy.

Zilliz Cloud free tier:

2 collections
1M vectors
No credit card

Quick Start

# Milvus Lite (embedded, no Docker)
pip install pymilvus

Python SDK

from pymilvus import MilvusClient

client = MilvusClient("milvus_demo.db")  # Embedded mode

# Create collection
client.create_collection(collection_name="docs", dimension=384)

# Insert vectors
data = [
    {"id": 1, "vector": [0.1]*384, "text": "AI guide"},
    {"id": 2, "vector": [0.2]*384, "text": "Python tutorial"}
]
client.insert(collection_name="docs", data=data)

# Search
results = client.search(
    collection_name="docs",
    data=[[0.1]*384],
    limit=5,
    output_fields=["text"]
)
print(results[0])

REST API

# Search vectors
curl -X POST http://localhost:9091/api/v1/search \
  -d '{"collection_name":"docs","vectors":[[0.1,0.2,...]],"limit":5}'

# Insert
curl -X POST http://localhost:9091/api/v1/entities \
  -d '{"collection_name":"docs","fields_data":[...]}'